Russia’s Putin, Iran’s Khamenei Meet to Discuss Syria

According to the decree, Russian firms are now authorized to export hardware and to provide financial and technical advice to help Iran with three specific tasks.

Before that agreement was ever concluded, it was already used to justify the restoration of contract for the transfer of an advanced S-300 missile defense system from Russian Federation to Iran.

But Kachikwu said that the GECF countries faced a number of challenges, emphasizing the need for “enhanced cooperation and coordination among GECF member countries to promote gas”.

On his one-day trip to Tehran today, Putin was also to attend the GECF meeting and, on the sidelines there, meet with Iranian President Hassan Rohani.

According to a statement by Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division Mr Ohi Alegbe in Abuja on Monday, he said that the increasing competition occasioned by the surge in new gas producers has led to a price war at a time when the cost of infrastructure development was escalating.

“Thirty-five priority projects were picked up in the spheres of energy, construction of sea terminals, and electrification of railroads”, Putin said.

Russia, which has built Iran’s only functioning nuclear reactor in the southern city of Bushehr, signed an agreement with Iran previous year to establish as many as eight more.

As the meeting ended, Putin gave Khamenei one of the oldest Quran manuscripts as a gift.

If activities continue in line with current expectations, this will be a drop in the bucket where exchange between Iran and Russian Federation is concerned. However its campaign appears to have hit rebel positions allowing Syria’s army to regain ground.

Moscow and Tehran have been the key backers of Syrian President Bashar Assad throughout his nation’s civil war, which has killed over 250,000 people and turned millions into refugees. “At a certain stage the question will arise whether the Islamic Revolutionary Guards will agree to support a secular regime in Syria”, Akhmetov said. He warned that the United States and its allies, having failed to accomplish their goals in Syria via armed conflict, are now pursuing the same goals via negotiations. “It is important to breathe a new life into Syria’s political institutions and to create civilian bodies of power”.

He added, “The Syrian crisis must and will be resolved politically”.

 GECF’s members are Algeria, Bolivia, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, UAE and Venezuela, whilst its observer states include Iraq, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Norway, Oman and Peru.

Russia’s leading expert on oriental affairs, leading research fellow at the Institute of the World Economy and worldwide Relations, Georgy Mirsky, has told TASS that the countries competing on the world market of hydrocarbons might cooperate successfully along strategic lines.